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Avs' top pick enjoys whirlwind experience

Avs introduce MacKinnon with third-line plans

By Terry Frei The Denver Post

Posted:
07/01/2013 10:12:29 PM MDT

Updated:
07/01/2013 10:12:30 PM MDT

DENVER -- Nathan MacKinnon hadn't been to Denver before and he hadn't yet seen much.

"I haven't gotten a tour yet," he said in the Avalanche dressing room on Monday afternoon in the Pepsi Center. "I've been driving around to the hotel and back. It's a beautiful city for sure. Is it 300 days of sunshine a year? Isn't that what I heard?"

Barely 24 hours after the Avalanche claimed him with the first pick of the NHL entry draft in New Jersey, MacKinnon -- who won't turn 18 until Sept. 1 -- met with the Colorado media.

"You're so jacked up after getting drafted, and I was there for six, seven hours after doing media and pictures and things like that," he said. "I'm pretty tired, but I still have some adrenaline going, for sure. I'm having a great time."

How much sleep had he gotten? "Not a whole lot," he said. "My friends and family all came to the hotel after, and we all hung out for a while. I got some sleep on the plane."

After the emotional high of the draft and even the aftermath, the hockey business will come soon enough, although MacKinnon had gotten wind of coach Patrick Roy's statement that he envisioned MacKinnon centering the third line right out of the gate.

MacKinnon said he hadn't skated since the end of the Memorial Cup tournament on May 26, when he and the Halifax Mooseheads beat the Portland Winterhawks in the championship game. The Avalanche will hold an off-ice, orientation-type development camp next week.

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"I'm going to get a good couple of months in before training camp and definitely get the cobwebs out," MacKinnon said. He mentioned several NHL players from Halifax, and said he probably would skate with some of them in the upcoming couple of months.

MacKinnon said "there have been some talks" about possible living arrangements in Denver, whether with a "billet" family or with an older player and his family, as happened when Matt Duchene settled in the basement of veteran defenseman Adam Foote and his family as a rookie in 2009-10.

"Everything's still up in the air right now, and I guess we'llfigure out that stuff as it comes along," MacKinnon said.

He said he hadn't had postdraft, serious hockey-oriented discussions with Joe Sakic, the Avalanche's executive vice president of hockey operations, and Roy.

"They're kind of welcoming me and congratulating me," he said. "I'm sure there will be some more serious talks when I come back to the development camp next week."

MacKinnon hadn't reached his first birthday when Roy, Sakic and the Avalanche won the Stanley Cup in 1996, the team's first season in Denver. He still was only 7 when Roy retired in 2003. But he has seen Roy close up the past two seasons when the former goalie was coaching the Quebec Remparts -- the Mooseheads' bitter league rivals.

"I remember lots from watching Colorado as a kid," MacKinnon said. "They were deep in the playoffs most of those years, and I got to see them lots. And obviously, yeah, there was a little rivalry there with Quebec and Halifax. That's behind us now, obviously. ...

"We played him in the playoffs my first year, and we really studied the way his team plays. I'm not sure if he'll still use the same systems or not, but I'm definitely familiar with those. Regardless, I think it's going to be a pretty smooth transition and he's a great coach. His track record speaks for itself."

MacKinnon also noted that the Avalanche has two other former Mooseheads on its roster -- veteran center Alex Tanguay, reacquired last week; and goaltender Jean-Sebastien Giguere. "They played there in the '90s, I think, and I wasn't even born then," he said, smiling.

Tanguay might point out, though, that he played for the Mooseheads as late as 1999 after going to Colorado on the 12th choice of the first round the year before.

O'Reilly's role

Roy said he hoped to meet with fourth-year forward Ryan O'Reilly soon and explain his plans to use MacKinnon as the third-line center and switch O'Reilly to wing on a line centered by Matt Duchene.

"It was the same scenario that Bob (Hartley) did with Peter (Forsberg) and Joe (Sakic) at some point," Roy said. "And Ryan is a great team guy, smart player. I think he will accept it."

Pracey on Jones

Avalanche chief scout Rick Pracey, on board with the selection of MacKinnon with the first choice Sunday, was emphatic that the team remained high on defenseman Seth Jones, who slid to the No. 4 choice.

"My message that I want to communicate 100 percent clear, is that it had nothing to do with Seth," Pracey said. "It was a competitive draft. These are all very, very good players. We believe in Seth Jones. His skating ability, his size, his mobility on the back end, his reach, they're elite. My experiences with him and his family on a personal level -- flying into Dallas and spending some time there -- were good. I'm very fond of Seth Jones and I wish him well. I'm a firm believer that he's going to have a very strong career in the NHL. We have decisions to make, and he was in those decisions right up to the end."

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